Why Didn't You Call Me?

Remember this: No one would answer.

I don’t care about people hunting. It is the shooting from a truck that bothers me.

As posted yesterday about the nut shooting from the truck window. I called the local DNR office to see if I could report the problem; the line rung on and on with no automated system with voice mail, or direct calls to an after-hours report line.

I decided to call this morning because those people will be out hunting today and probably the 1^st.

I leave a message at the local DNR office. Officer calls me back. I begin to tell him about this person shooting from a truck. He asks me why I didn’t call him yesterday. I told him I called the office-no one answered. He tells me he was in my area up to 7 pm. I replied how was I supposed to know that? I figured if the person was desperate enough to shoot yesterday, given there was only two more days to the season-they would be out shooting tomorrow. Besides, they already realized they were seen and decided to leave.

I told him that every time I call the after-hours number the person there replies like battery acid and that I didn’t have good experiences with the DNR people on duty.

This is the modus operandi of DNR employees in dealing with caller complaint.

The officer does not take down the complaint and listen to you.
The officer becomes argumentative about why you are calling.
The officer whines there isn't enough help to cover the complaints.
You are suppose to magically know daily schedule of the DNR officer so as not to impose inconvenience on him.
The officer will defend the criminal because it is two days left to the season and why bother? Right? 

   I finally became frustrated and told the officer he wasn’t interested in listening to my complaint. All the officer had to do was pencil my complaint down and tell me he would look into it. This is not what they do. It becomes a reverse argument based on implied lack of response on the part of the caller by the DNR investigator.

The truth seems to be: They just don't want to be bothered.

Somehow, you are the guilty party. I replied that I felt he was defending the person breaking the law. He was trying to reason with me why he shouldn’t bother to look into this person. It was more important to disregard my complaint, upset me and I was already bothered by the shooter from the truck window. It is not my problem the DNR doesn’t employ enough staff to do the work.

I thought about calling the main office in the upstate, but if this officer’s attitude is a reflection of the overall attitude of the state DNR employees-it is a waste of time and effort.

When you have to use the current behavior of a DNR officer as the prime example for why you weren't Johnny-On-the-Spot for calling, is a sad indicator of the treatment a caller complaint is going to receive when calling that agency regardless of the content of the complaint.

Some of the money coming out of your pocket is probably paying that employee for extending to you a poor example of bad customer service. 

But you better be respectful of them at all times even when they are disrespecting of  you? How is that right?

What good is a state agency when the workers refuse to do their job? How safe are you actually as a private land owner when someone agitates your property boundaries out of hunting desperation?

Written by: Angelia Y Larrimore

Vehicle Hunters: Dogs, Guns, and Blatant Disregard

Remember this: This ain’t the O-K Corral.

I have a current, active hunting and fishing license. I’ve been several times since my escape from that land: the Southwest.

For the past two years, the last couple of days of hunting season bring out the worst desperation for hunters. Every year it gets worse.

I am not sure what drives this need to do desperate acts. Is the stress and pressure to keep up, produce a product, and suck up to everyone to stay in the nook of their good graces that much of a problem in the hunting world? Is it worth it and for how long?  

I was having a tire plugged and doing some farrier work on my pony. The other horses alerted me that something was amiss out by the road. I looked up and saw a dark blue, Chevrolet truck parked in the road at the edge of the other pasture. This pasture extends out to the woods and my horses ramble around wherever they please eating.

I thought, “How creepy. Not sure if that is someone casing the joint, or just being a douche.”

I turned my head to grab the part to put air in my tires when I heard a loud shotgun go off. I jerked and looked straight at the vehicle. Three more were popped off. I said some profanities.

Every horse person in the known universe can concur: You do not mess with my horses.

This person was sitting in their truck shooting out over the pasture from the window. The truck was parked a stone’s throw from the neighbor’s residence. The wife is always in the house but hardly ever comes out.

I wasn’t sure what they could be shooting at. The woods were two pastures away. I couldn’t remember if it were dove hunting season-but still-no one is supposed to shoot from a vehicle especially out over someone else’s private property.

It agitated my father, who sent me after another truck while he watched the dark blue Chevrolet now backing up to hide behind the neighbor’s magnolia tree. Someone has been trespassing on his property and menacing him while he hunts. He can’t hunt in peace because of the boundary agitation by out-of-community hunters and community hunters skulking about in vehicles.

Now the private land owner that hunts is being assaulted by the vehicular hunter, who acts pretty much like a scavenger predator (coyote) at the boundaries.

I don’t think anyone foresaw this problem with landless hunters not willing to hunt sparse public land then converging on the areas outside of private land owners while trying to circumvent the land owner’s request for hunt lease funds in lieu of access; then trying to figure out how to run wildlife off of rest areas or quiet hunt areas in private lands by using trespassing hunting dogs, gun fire from mobile vehicles, and trespassing by driving onto ungated private land as a get-in and get-out scenario.

Just because you have a hunting license doesn’t give anyone the right to expect a property owner to hand over access to their property and open the property owner up to liability because of someone’s potentially hazardous pastime.

I left and followed another one barreling down the road. You find out one hunter-he or she knows who the others are because they are literally sucking at pack hunting. Low and behold, he was crawling under the neighbor’s cattle gate to grab a hunting dog.

The problem with hunting dogs with this scenario is putting them out on the boundary of a private area you have no access to, then know those dogs are going to cross over that inaccessible land without permission of the land owner in hopes of driving animals off-this is probably done while another hunter is in a stand trying to hunt that area with a valid hunting lease.

It is blatant disregard; much like someone shooting out over my horse pasture.

I thought of some suggestions. People like the option of suggestion.

If hunters are going to be allowed to hunt with dogs, those dogs should be microchipped, wearing identification collars, or collared with tracking systems. If a private landowner should find one on their land, should be able to require a payment of a return fee to have that dog relinquished back to the owner-payable by the owner to the landowner. Also, there should be accountability on the part of the hunter using the hunting dog. That dog’s identifier should be register with the DNR for monitoring for a fee that way if the hunter is unwilling to pay the return fee on the dog-they should be fined for negligible abandonment. This would reaffirm accountability when the dog walks out in front of someone’s vehicle and causes that person’s property to be damaged and in need of repair.

Now, this business of shooting from a vehicle can cause all kinds of problems. You never know when you are pointing a weapon at someone’s property, even if you think it is the woods, that there might be someone standing right there or walking by that could catch the spray of it. It is also wrong to open fire around residential areas far from the woods, even if you’re shooting at birds out of bird hunting season. Home owners don’t want to be menaced by out-of-community vehicular hunters blasting away for unknown reasons and scaring people.  This is a good way to get shot at by senile, older people who take offense at unwanted gun play from hooligans.

This has become an embarrassing and shameful way to be. Deer feed people, even undeserving, selfish people. Yet, the very animals everyone claims as “only for food” are treated like corn fodder, nothing more than an object, not deserving of any kind of respect.

Hunters are state constituents with a purchased privilege to do an activity. They are not God, nor are hunters entitled to walk around like John Poppy Cock demanding non-hunting participants smooch posterior because of implied and expected erroneous, cognitive delusions of being an alpha hunter; one that uses everything under the sun to catch a sad little deer.

There possibly is plenty of deer in the upstate. Several years now, my observation is the steady lack of visuals on deer. In order for me to even hear a buck, I have to listen in the dark after 10 pm. Not only the animal but the human is menaced by the ever imposing presence of vigilant hunters waiting to score.  

I would hate the idea that people are so hunter-greedy someone wants to make deer hunting a nighttime sport-because I am a hunter, I don’t apologize- blah, blah, blah.

Everything is eventual, per Stephen King, at the rate hunting is traveling it will reach its carrying capacity before it makes a free dive.

I ponder that hunters lost sight of how to be. Hunting appears to be an ever-growing soulless dead thing that no longer knows how to be-at least from my vantage point.

Is this the irony of hunting? To be a soul-less dead thing much like the multitude of soul-less dead things that is the eventual outcome of its labors.

Written by: Angelia Y Larrimore